A Little Spark Read online

  ALSO BY BARRY JONSBERG

  Catch Me If I Fall

  A Song Only I Can Hear

  Game Theory

  Pandora Jones (Book 1) Admission

  Pandora Jones (Book 2) Deception

  Pandora Jones (Book 3) Reckoning

  My Life as an Alphabet

  Being Here

  Cassie

  Ironbark

  Dreamrider

  It’s Not All About YOU, Calma!

  The Whole Business with Kiffo and the Pitbull

  First published by Allen & Unwin in 2022

  Copyright © Barry Jonsberg 2022

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  ISBN 978 1 76052 692 4

  eISBN 978 1 76106 484 5

  For teaching resources, explore www.allenandunwin.com/resources/for-teachers

  Lyrics from ‘Annie’s Song’: words and Music by John Denver

  © Copyright 1974 BMG Ruby Songs/Reservoir Media Music/Mushroom Music

  All Rights for BMG Ruby Songs administered by BMG Rights Management (US) LLC

  All Rights for Reservoir Media Music administered by Reservoir Media Management Inc

  Print rights for BMG Rights Management administered in Australia and New Zealand by Hal Leonard Australia Pty Ltd ABN 13 085 333 713

  www.halleonard.com.au

  Used By Permission. International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorised Reproduction is Illegal.

  Cover & text design by Debra Billson

  Cover images by Shutterstock: Iaroslava Daragan/Sewon Park/Studio

  Ayutaka/mBelniak/Artist Vaska/Anna Sol/tereez

  Set by Midland Typesetters, Australia

  www.barryjonsberg.com

  For Cathy Hood and Jude Lee

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  TWO MONTHS LATER

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  My name is Caitlyn Carson, but you can call me Cate or CC.

  This is mainly about me. I’m thirteen years old and not especially remarkable, which, I know, is not the most compelling reason to read on. But it’s not only about me. I have parents that play significant roles in this story. My father is Michael Carson and he loves me. My mother is Lois Houseman and she loves me. They don’t love each other. I suppose they must have at some stage, but if so, no one talks about it. Now they just nod or exchange neutral words, and I think if it wasn’t for my presence (and I am always there when they are together) they would make judgements about the other’s character and possibly resurrect old wounds or grievances. Worlds of pain lurk there. Keeping all that in check is tiring. Sometimes I feel resentful that I was given the role when no one asked me if I wanted it. Most times I just feel tired.

  I love my parents, so that’s good.

  But sometimes I think love isn’t enough. Even though I’m only thirteen years old, which, let’s be honest, does not add up to an impressive lifespan, I’ve learned that love isn’t necessarily what it says on the pack. I know it can inject pain, destroy lives, twist people into shapes that quickly turn monstrous. In some ways we’d be better off without it.

  I suppose that’s what this story is about. Love, pain and the mysteries that are people.

  It’s also about madness and why we need it.

  CHAPTER

  ONE

  It was dark, it was late and I had no idea why Dad had driven us out from the city for over an hour. I’d seen dark and I’d experienced late.

  But Dad normally has his reasons.

  Normally.

  When I tried to discover them, however, he wasn’t completely forthcoming.

  ‘It’s just a drive, okay, Cate? Into the Dandenongs to a secret place I know.’ He glanced over at me and gave a chuckle. ‘Actually, it was a place I used to go to with your mum. When we were courting. And a good few times after we’d stopped courting and got married.’

  ‘No one uses the word “courting” anymore, Dad,’ I said. ‘Not if you’re under a hundred anyway.’ I didn’t want to discuss the rest of his statement. Courting, as I understood it, meant trying to impress the other person with how wonderful you were. Did that stop once you got married? Apparently, from Dad’s point of view, it did. I found that sad.

  ‘In fact,’ said Dad, ‘we came up here slightly over thirteen years ago.’ He reached over and punched me lightly on the arm. ‘This place I’m taking you to … well, it’s possibly where you came into being, Cate. Know what I mean? Isn’t that worth the trip?’

  It only took half a second before the meaning hit me.

  ‘Oh, yeew,’ I squealed. ‘That is so gross, Dad.’

  ‘But …’

  I stuck my fingers in my ears and started humming. I glanced over from time to time and he was smiling, but he wasn’t talking so I unplugged my ears.

  ‘What’s so special about this place that it’s worth driving for …’ I glanced at my phone. ‘… sixty-seven minutes?’ I stabbed at him with a finger. ‘And nothing about what you and Mum got up to, okay?’

  ‘You’ll see,’ said Dad. ‘You’ll see. Unless I got this seriously wrong, we should be getting there in the next couple of minutes.’ He muttered to himself, ‘About twenty minutes past Kalorama Park, on the left …’

  If I’m going to be honest, I was starting to get grumpy. We’d left at nine in the evening, and it was now nearly ten past ten, so even if we got to the place, turned around and headed home, it would be close to midnight by the time I hit bed. I know how sad that sounds, but I was tired, okay? And grumpy.

  I opened the passenger window and stuck my head out. It was so dark out there. It was strangely unnerving to be travelling down a narrow, winding road with just the headlights to show the way. They cut a tunnel in the darkness but didn’t show much of what was to each side. The night air was cool and smelled like trees and earth. I tilted my head and looked at the sky. The branches of trees whipped by, but in those moments when the sky was clear I could see the dusting of millions of stars. Wherever we were stopping, the night sky would be fantastic. You don’t really get to see the Milky Way properly when you’re close to Melbourne. Humanity has washed it away with streetlights and football stadiums and television sets.

  But out here?

  Out here there was no filter. The universe stared down at us and it was naked and brilliant and never-ending.

&nbs
p; Dad finally stopped the car at the side of the road and we got out. It was really quiet apart from the ticking of the engine as it cooled. Dad opened the boot and handed me a blanket, took out a torch and a wicker picnic basket and locked the car.

  ‘Just down this path here, Cate.’

  I could barely see the path, even with the torch, but I grunted and followed him through a small gap between two bushes. We stumbled down a rutted track for probably no more than ten metres and then Dad turned off the torch. I gasped.

  We stood on a clearing at the top of a rocky outcrop. The Milky Way coiled above us, a vast ribbon of points of light, some red and orange and white and yellow and all the colours in between. Far off, glittering in the light of a quarter moon, was a band of water.

  Dad put his arm around my shoulder. I shivered a little because it was cold.

  ‘Worth the drive, Cate?’ he asked.

  I just nodded.

  ‘I don’t think many people know this is here,’ said Dad. ‘I found it by accident.’

  ‘Don’t tell anyone,’ I said. They’d only put up viewing platforms and pay-for-view binoculars and vans selling convenience food.

  ‘Our secret,’ said Dad.

  We stood for a few minutes and I did know that this was worth the drive. It was worth getting back at midnight. Why was I being so bitchy? It was Friday night. I wasn’t going to be up at six thirty in the morning. I wasn’t going to be up in the morning.

  ‘It’s amazing,’ I said. No words could capture what was above my head. No words I could find, anyway. When I managed to tear my gaze from the lightshow above, he’d laid out the blanket on the ground and opened up the picnic basket. There were two insulated containers with a couple of coffee mugs.

  I love my dad.

  I sat on the rug, hands warmed around my coffee mug (mine was hot chocolate – did I mention I love my dad?), leaning back and staring into the infinite. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so calm, so … at one with everything.

  ‘We’re time travelling, Cate,’ said Dad. ‘See that star up there?’ I tried to follow his finger, but everywhere you looked there were stars. In fact, there was no place in the sky that wasn’t saturated with them. ‘It’s red. See?’ I thought I could make out a red star in the vague direction he was pointing. And I guessed it didn’t matter if I saw it or not. He could and he was going to tell me something about it.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s Betelgeuse. It’s in the constellation Orion and it’s six hundred and fifty light years from us, give or take. A light year is a measure of distance …’

  I knew what a light year was, but it would’ve been rude to interrupt.

  ‘… the distance light would travel in a year is about nine and a half trillion kilometres, so that star is roughly six thousand trillion kilometres away from us. This means we see Betelgeuse as it was six hundred and fifty years ago. The light coming from that star, the light hitting our eyes now, started its journey around the year thirteen seventy odd, when Shakespeare wasn’t even a glint in his father’s eye.’

  He stopped, possibly to allow me to absorb what he was saying. I knew something about this stuff, but it was still exciting to hear it and experience it at the same time.

  ‘The Milky Way,’ he continued, ‘the galaxy we call home, is about one hundred thousand light years across and contains around one hundred billion stars. The universe – what we can see, at least – contains probably two trillion – two million million – galaxies a bit like the Milky Way.’

  The numbers were starting to become meaningless. They do when you talk about the night sky, but again, I just liked hearing dad talk. The air was clear and cold, the stars were the same and I felt the entire universe was looking down at me, my hands wrapped around a metal cup of cooling hot chocolate. It was the strangest feeling.

  ‘We live,’ said Dad, ‘on an unremarkable planet next to a totally unremarkable sun at the unfashionable edge of an unremarkable galaxy in a universe teeming with galaxies.’ He paused. ‘How does that make you feel, Cate?’

  ‘Not gonna work, Dad,’ I replied. ‘I’m still the most important thing ever created.’

  He laughed.

  ‘Know what?’ he said. ‘I think you might be.’

  Which is when I saw the light. It was one light at first, and for a while I thought it might be a shooting star. It was off to my right, at the border of my vision, and it must have been the movement that caught my attention. It travelled quickly for a second or so and then stopped dead. I might not be an astronomer, but celestial bodies don’t behave that way. Do they?

  ‘Did you see that, Dad?’

  ‘Hmmm?’

  ‘Over there.’ I pointed. ‘That bright white light.’

  Dad gave a small chuckle. ‘A white light, huh, Cate? Well, that narrows it down.’

  ‘It’s that …’ But the light had changed colour. It morphed from white to orange to red and then to blue and back to white. And it moved leisurely in a straight line from right to left. I didn’t say anything else. I could tell by the way Dad gripped my hand that he’d seen it too.

  ‘It’s a UFO,’ I said.

  ‘You are so out of touch, Cate,’ Dad replied. ‘They’re called UAPs now. Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. But I think you’ll find a simple explanation for it. It’s probably the International Space Station.’

  ‘Changing colour?’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe it’s picking up light reflecting from the upper atmosphere. There are all kinds of crystals up there, Cate, with all kinds of chemical composition. It’s how astronomers discover what stars are made of, by analysing their light spectrum. I’m sure that’s all it is.’

  I pointed my finger.

  ‘The International Space Station seems to have stopped dead now, Dad. Oh, they’ve found reverse apparently …’

  I wasn’t trying to be sarcastic. The words just came out. The light had changed again, cycling through a different set of colours, and as I’d pointed out to Dad it was performing some really weird manoeuvres, reversing rapidly, staying still for a moment, darting up and down.

  ‘Maybe it’s a drone,’ said Dad.

  ‘There’s another one. Over there.’ Another light, far to the left had appeared, moving slowly but steadily towards the initial light. Then I saw another one. And another. Six in total, seven, nine, twelve. They converged on each other, morphed into a pattern against the sky. A diamond formation, each dot of light sparkling in a different colour. It was amazing and exciting and slightly, just slightly, scary. I didn’t know if the tingle down my spine was fear or sheer joy.

  ‘That would be a lot of drones, Dad,’ I said. ‘And what would be the point? To impress a couple of people in a deserted place?’

  ‘Your theory then, Cate?’

  ‘Those lights are coordinated and moving in a way that cannot happen in nature. They are controlled, they are designed. There’s intelligence behind them.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And that intelligence is either from here or it’s from there.’ I waved a hand at the sky in general.

  ‘I thought we’d get to aliens sooner or later,’ said Dad. ‘That’s a very long bow you’re drawing there, Cate.’

  ‘Is it?’ The lights suddenly broke apart from one another, spread out in a line across the sky. The one in the very centre grew in size. Or at least that’s what my eyes were telling me. Then I understood. It wasn’t growing, it was approaching. The tingle down my spine increased. Part of me wanted to run, another part needed to know what was going to happen next. To be honest, it wasn’t much of an internal battle.

  The light now resolved itself from a blur into a disc. There was no doubt that this thing was a disc and that it was spinning – the shifting formation of colours a consequence of a different face being exposed to my line of sight. I still had no idea of its size because there was no reference point to help me. Against the backdrop of the universe, this thing could have been a metre in diameter or a hundred metres
.

  I realised I’d stopped breathing. I forced myself to take long, steady breaths. I could feel my heart thudding against my chest.

  In less than ten seconds they all disappeared. They just winked out of existence. We spent ten minutes searching the sky, but all the lights had gone.

  ‘Looks like the show’s over,’ said Dad.

  ‘Not necessarily.’ I’d read enough about flying saucers or UFOs or UAPs to know that they could be back at any moment. It was late in the evening and I had no pressing engagements. We could afford another half an hour to see if they’d come back for a curtain call. So we sat on the rug. There was no more hot chocolate in my thermos but Dad let me have the rest of his coffee. It was pretty disgusting, but it was hot.

  ‘Aliens?’ said Dad. ‘You were going to explain.’

  ‘You pretty much said it yourself,’ I replied. ‘Countless billions of galaxies with countless billions of stars, yet we think Earth is the only place to have intelligent life? That’s crazy, Dad. It’s crazy from a mathematical point of view as well. Probability alone says there must be millions, possibly billions of intelligent life forms out there, most more advanced than our own.’

  ‘So where are they?’

  I waved a hand at the sky. ‘Hello, Dad. Haven’t you been paying attention?’

  ‘Ah, I see. These aliens have travelled countless light years in their crafts, in defiance of the laws of physics, to arrive here. And then what? Hey guys, we’ve just travelled for two million years. Let’s scare the crap out of those two humans and get the hell out of here. We can laugh about it all the way home. God knows, we’ll have time.’

  ‘I don’t know what goes through an alien mind, Dad,’ I said, though his remarks stung a little, maybe because they made sense. ‘I don’t know what goes through yours most of the time.’

  ‘Me neither,’ he said. ‘C’mon. Let’s get going. I’m starting to get really tired and you’ve just drunk the last of my coffee.’

  We packed up and walked to the car. I was going to lie down in the back seat, but Dad insisted I recline the passenger seat as far as it would go. At least that way I could use the seatbelt. He put the heater on full and we started to move. I’d even closed my eyes when the car lurched to a halt and the engine went quiet.